Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

the Balkan peoples in accordance with the rights of each nation. In my judgment, if the European Powers had not interfered, notably Austria, with her intrigues, the Balkan question would have been largely settled by the first Balkan War. These intrigues of the Western Powers were due to their desire to maintain the old theory of the balance of power. Austria, for example, did not want Serbia to reach the Adriatic, nor did Italy want Greece to obtain the valuable port of Avlona. Therefore Austria and Italy combined to erect an independent Albania. At the same time, Germany did not want Turkey totally expelled from Europe because she needed the friendship of Turkey in order to carry out her plans of extending German influence in Asiatic Turkey.

The result of this interference of the European Powers was the creation of a fictitious Albanian state; the reduction of Turkish territory to a mere strip of land from which she could defend Constantinople and the Dardanelles; and the increasing demands of Bulgaria, encouraged by Austria, which led to the second Balkan War. The hatred and jealousy created by the second Balkan War and by the interference of the Western Powers are so strong that the Balkan question cannot now be settled amicably. If the Allies are victorious, in my judgment, they must insist upon it that Serbia shall reach the Adriatic, that Greece shall extend to Avlona, that Bulgaria shall be reduced in size, that Rumania shall have the entire Dobrudja, that Turkey shall be driven out of Europe and her European territory shall be divided between Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria, and that Constantinople shall be internationalized. This is the only practical solution of the Balkan question, and it must be determined and maintained by the concerted action of the Allies. Here again comes the difficulty which arises from America's technical friendship with Bulgaria and Turkey. If the Allies are to carry out the programme which I have suggested, they must do it with America's concurrence, and this would be very difficult for the American Government if it maintains its diplomatic friendship with Bulgaria and Turkey. Germany has obtained her predominating influence in cen

I

tral and southeastern Europe by her economic and financial
support of those regions. Let me give you one typical illustra-
tion. A few years before the war the present Prime Minister
of Rumania, then a member of the Cabinet, said to his col-
leagues who shared his sympathies with France: "We are bor-
rowing too much money of Germany and thus giving her too
strong a hold upon us. Why do we not go to France?" "Very
good," said his colleagues; "see what you can do." He went to
Paris and attempted to negotiate a loan of fifty millions of
dollars, but was very politely "turned down," as you say, by
the Parisian bankers, who with the utmost tact and courtesy
explained that they were too unfamiliar with the resources and
economic conditions of Rumania to negotiate such a loan. Cha-
grined and unwilling to return home without the money, he
then went to Berlin and was received with
open arms. Only
fifty million dollars!" said the Berlin financiers.
That's tos
little. You ought to have a hundred millions." And they gave
him readily what he needed. He learned that when the under-
writing was completed the Parisian bankers had taken forty
per cent of the loan because it had the moral indorsement of
Berlin. If the people of the United States want peace, freedom,
and democratic development in Europe, they must give or aid
in giving the financial and economic support to the smaller
nations which has been one of the most effective instruments of
German domination.

66

66

[ocr errors]

V. What about Turkey in Europe and Constantinople? The answer to this question is comprised in what I have just said about the Balkan situation.

In conclusion, I should like to say that, in my judgment, the Allies can reach a satisfactory victory only by their correct solution of the Balkan, the Austrian, and the Russian questions as I have outlined them. No military victory on the western front will destroy the menace of Pan-Germanism until the Balkan and Austrian territorial problems are settled and the economic and political problems of Russia are solved. New York City, September 20, 1918.

ON NIGHT PATROL

A TALE OF THE AMERICAN DESTROYERS
BY HENRY B. BESTON

T was the end of the afternoon. There was light in the western sky and on the winding bay astern, but ahead, leaden, still, and slightly tilted up to a gray bank of eastern cloud, lay the forsaken and beleaguered sea. The destroyer, nosing slowly through the gap in the nets by the harbor mouth, entered the swept channel, increased her speed, and, trembling to the growing vibration, hurried on into the dark. High, crumbling, and excessively romantic, the Irish coast behind her died away. Tragic waters lay before her. Whatever illusory friendliness men had read into the sea had vanished; the great leaden disk about the vessel seemed as insecure as a mountain road down whose length travelers cease from speaking for fear of avalanches. "A vast circular ambush." Somehow the beholder cannot help feeling that the waters should show some sign of the horrors they have seen. But the sea has swallowed all, memories as well as living men, engulfing a thousand wrecks as completely as time engulfs a thousand years.

The dark came swiftly, almost as if the destroyer had sailed to find it in that bank of eastern cloud. There was an interval of twilight--no dying glow, but a mere pause in the pale ebb of the day. The destroyer had begun to roll. Looking back from the bridge, one saw the lean, inconceivably lean, steel deck, the joints of the plates still visible, the guns to each side with their attendant crews, a machine gun swinging on a pivot like a weather-vane, the gently swaying bulk of the suspended motor dories and lifeboats, and the four great tubes of the funnels rising flush from the plates, and crowned with a tremble of vibration from the oil flames below. And all this lean world swung slowly from side to side, rocking as gently as a child's cradle, swayed as if by some gentle force from within.

The destroyer was out on patrol. A part of the threatened sea had been given to her to watch and ward. She was the guardian, the avenger.

The supper hour arrived. Men came in groups to the galley door, some to depart with steamy pannikins; there was a smell of good food very satisfying to children of earth. In the officers' ward-room, when dinner was over and the Negro mess boys were silently folding the white cloth, securing the chairs, and tidying up, those not on watch settled down to a friendly talk. All the lights except one bulb hanging over the table in a pyramidal tin shade had been switched off. It was very quiet. Now and then one could hear the splash of a wave against the side, a footfall on the deck overhead, or the tinkle of the knives and forks which the steward was putting away in a drawer. The hanging light swayed with the motion of the ship, trailing a pool of light up and down the oaken table. Cigarette smoke rose in wisps, and long, langorous Oriental coils to the clean ceiling. A sailor or two came in for his orders. Hushed voices talking apart, a direction to do this or that, a respectful, businesslike "Yes, sir," a quiet withdrawal by the only door. It was all very calm; it had the atmosphere of a cruise; yet those aboard might have been torpedoed any minute, struck a mine, crashed into a submarine fooling about too near the surface (this has happened), or been sunk in thirty seconds by some hurrying, furtive brute of a liner which would have ridden over them as easily as a snake goes over a branch. The talk flowed in many channels on the problems of destroyers, on the adventures of other boats, on members of the crew soon to be advanced to commissioned rating, but under the thought and under the words could be discerned the one fierce purpose of these fighting lives:

[graphic]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

the will to strike down the submarine and open the lanes of the sea. Oh, the vigilance, the energy, the keenness, of the American patrol! There were tales of U-boats hiding in suspected bays, of merchantmen swiftly and terribly avenged, of voices that cried for help in the night, of lifeboats almost awash in foul waters, and of dead floating horribly. The war of the destroyer against the submarine is a matter of tragic melodrama.

The wandering glow of the swaying lamp was reflected from the varnished table now to one keen young face, now to another. "Running a destroyer is a young man's game," says the Navy. True enough. Pray de not imagine them as a crew of "helldriving boys." The destroyer service is the achievement of the man in the early thirties, of the officer with a young man's vigor and energy and the resolution of maturity. After all, the Navy Department is not yet trusting vessels worth several million dollars and carrying over a hundred men to eager youngsters who have no background of experience to their energy, good will, and bravery. If you would imagine a destroyer captain, take your man of thirty-two or thirty-three, give him blue eyes, a keen, clear-cut face, essentially American in its features, a sailor's tan, and a sprinkling of gray hair. A type to remember, for to the destroyer captain more than to any other single figure do we S owe our opportunity of winning the war.

[ocr errors]

The evening waned. The officers who were to go on watch at twelve stole off to get a little sleep before being called. The navigator and the senior engineer slept on the transoms of the wardroom. A junior officer lingered beneath the solitary ever-swinging light, reading a magazine. A little itch worked itself into the destroyer's motion, a swift upward leap, a little catch in midair, a descent ending in a quiver. The voice of the waters grew louder, there were hissing splashes, watery blows, bubbly gurgles.

The sleeping officers had not paused to undress. Nobody bothers to strip on a destroyer. There isn't time, and a man has to be ready on the instant for any eventuality.

The door giving on a narrow passageway to the deck opened, and as it stood ajar, the hissing of the water alongside invaded the silent room. A sailor in a blue reefer, a big lad with big hands and simple, friendly face, entered quietly, walked over to a transom and said;

"Twelve o'clock, sir."

"All right, Simmons," said the engineer, sitting up and kicking off the clothes at once with a quick gesture; then he swung his legs over the side of the bunk, pulled on a coat and hat, and wandered out to take his trick at the bridge.

He found a lovely, starlit night, a night rich in serenity and promised peace, a night for lovers, a poet's night. There was phosphorescence in the water, and as the destroyer rolled from side to side now the guns and rails to port, now those to starboard, stood shaped against the spectral trail of foam running river-like alongside. One could see some distance ahead over the haunted plain. The men by the guns were changing watch; black figures came down the lane by the funnels. A sailor was drawing cocoa in a white enamel cup from a tap off the galley wall. The hatchway leading to the quarters of the crew was open; it was dark within; the engineer heard the wiry creak of a bunk into which some one had just tumbled. The engineer climbed two little flights of steps to the bridge. It was just midnight. It was very still on the bridge, for all of the ten or twelve people standing by. All very quiet and rather solemn. One can't escape from the rich melodrama of it all. The bridge was a little low-roofed space perhaps ten feet wide and eight feet long; it had a front wall shaped like a wide outward-pointing V; its sides and rear were open to the night. The handful of officers and men on watch stood at various points along the walls peering out into the darkness. Phosphorescent crests of low, breaking waves flecked the waters about; it was incredibly spectral. In the heart of the bridge burned its only light, a binnacle lamp burning as steadily as a light in the chancel of a darkened church; the glow cast the shadow of the helmsman and the bars of the wheel down upon the floor in radiations of light and shade like the stripes of a Japanese flag. The captain, keeping a sharp lookout over the bow, gave his orders now and then to the helmsman, a petty officer with a sober, serious face. Suddenly there were steps on the companionway behind; the

[merged small][ocr errors]

"Yes, sir; I should have said that it wasn't more than a few miles away. We all heard it quite distinctly down below." Evidently some devil's work was going on in the heart of the darkness. The vibration had traveled through the water and had been heard, as always, in that part of the ship below the water-line.

Williams withdrew. The destroyer rushed on into the romantic night.

one.

[ocr errors]

"Must have spotted something on the surface," said some A radio operator appeared with a sheaf of telegrams: "Submarine seen in latitude x and longitude y.' "Derelict awash in position so and so." "Gun-fire heard off Cape Z at half-past eleven." It all had to do with the Channel zone to the south. The captain shoved the sheaf into a pocket of his jacket. Suddenly through the dark was heard a hard, thundering pound.

"By jingo, there's another!" said somebody. "Near by, too. Wonder what's up?"

man.

"Sounded more like a torpedo this time," said an invisible speaker in a heavy, dogged voice. A stir of interest gripped the bridge; one could see it in the shining eyes of the young helmsTwo of the sailors discussed the thing in whispers ; fragments of conversation might have been overheard-"No, I should have said off the port bow." "Isn't this about the place where the Welsh Prince got hers?" "Listen! didn't you hear something then?"

From somewhere in the distance came three long blasts-blasts of a deep roaring whistle.

"Something's up, sure!"

The destroyer, in obedience to an order of the captain, took a sharp turn to port, and, turning, left far behind a curving, luminous trail upon the sea. The wind was dying down. Again there were steps on the way.

"Distress signal, sir," said the messenger from the radio-room, a shock-haired lad who spoke with the precise intonation of a Bostonian.

The captain stepped to the side of the binnacle, lowered the flimsy sheet into the glow of the lamp, and summoned his officers. The message read "S. S. Zemblan,' position x. y. z., torpedoed, request immediate assistance."

[graphic]

66

An instant later several things happened all at once. The general quarters "alarm bell, which sends every man to his station, began to ring, full speed ahead was rung on in the engineroom, and the destroyer's course was altered once more. Men began to tumble up out of the hatchways, figures rushed along the dark deck-there were voices, questions, names. The alarm bell rang as monotonously as an ordinary door-bell whose switch has jammed. But soon one sound, the roaring of the giant blowers sucking in air for the forced draught in the boiler-room, overtopped and crushed all other fragments of noise, even as an advancing wave gathers into itself and destroys pools and rills left along the beach by the tide. A roaring sound, a deep windy hum. Gathering speed at once, the destroyer leaped ahead. And even as violence overtook the lives and works of men, the calm upon the sea became ironically more than ever assuring and

[blocks in formation]
[graphic]

as a rushing white streak in the dark water, and was coming towards the destroyer with the speed of an express train, coming like a bullet out of a gun.

as a wounded soldier goes. Other ships resemble a strong man suddenly stricken by some incurable and mysterious disease. The unhappy Zemblan was of this latter class. There were two boats on the water, splashing their oars with the calm regularity of the college crews; there were inarticulate and lonely cries. Away from the light, and but vaguely seen against the midpor- night sky, lay a British patrol boat which had happened to be very close at hand. And other boats were signaling: "Zemblan -am coming." A sloop signaled the destroyer that she would look after the survivors. Cries were no longer heard. Round and round the ship in great sweeps went the destroyer, seeking a chance to be of use-to avenge. Other vessels arrived, talked by wireless, and disappeared before they had been more than vaguely seen.

"Hard over!" cried the captain. The wheel spun, the roaring, trembling ship turned in the dark. A strange thing happened. Just as the destroyer had cleared the danger line the torpedo, as if actuated by some malevolent intelligence, poised, and actually turned again towards the vessel. The fate of the destroyer lay on the knees of the gods. Those on the bridge instinctively braced themselves for the shock. The affair seemed to be taking a long time, a terribly long time. An instant later the contrivance rushed through the foaming wake of the destroyer only a few yards astern, and, continuing on, disappeared in the calm and glittering dark. A floating red light suddenly appeared just ahead, and at the same moment all caught sight of the Zemblan.

She was hardly more than half a mile away. Somebody aboard her had evidently just thrown over one of those lifebuoys with a self-igniting torch attachment, and this buoy burned a steady orange red just off that side on which the vessel was listing. The dark, stricken, motionless bulk leaned over the little pool of orange radiance. Gleaming in a fitful pool round. the floating torch, one could see vague figures working on a boat by the stern, and one figure walking briskly down the deck to join them. There was not a sign of any explosion-no breakage, no splintered wood. Some ships are stricken and go to their death in flames and eddying steam-go to their death

Just after two o'clock the Zemblan's stem rose in the air and hung suspended motionless. The tilted bulk might have been rock thrust suddenly out of the deep towards the starry sky. Then suddenly, as if released from a pose, the stern plunged under-plunged as if it were the last act of the vessel's conscious

will.

The destroyer cruised about till dawn. A breeze sprang up with the first glow of day and scattered the little wreckage which had floated silly-solemnly about. Nothing remained to tell of an act more terrible than murder, more base than assassination.

The captain gave one searching glance over the awakened sea and ordered the destroyer back to her patrol.

"FEAR NOT THEM"

BY EDWARD J. HARDING

[graphic]

Alas for all the ruin and the woe
Of this devouring war! the young lives quelled,
The tortured bodies, and the hearts that bleed,
Kingdoms enslaved, and deserted homes!
But there are powers invulnerable to you,
Proud warriors, that shall build the world anew.
Will ye put out the sun's eternal fire,
And rend the crimson curtain of the dawn?
Turn roaring ocean to a slimy pool,
And smirch the crystals of the falling snow?
Level the mountain bastions, and unmake
The mirrored skies and forests of the lake?

Can ye destroy the majesty of night,
The lovely moon unveiling silently,
The sparkling of the innumerable stars,
The stealing awe, the impassioned ecstasy
Of souls upborne to heavenly heights sublime,
Conscious of God, and conquerors of time?

What, will ye paralyze the painter's hand,
And hush the echoes of the poet's hymn?
Shall music's lingering sweetness bring no more
Such peace as when an angel passes nigh?
Shall apple blossoms lose their delicate hue,
And beauty flee the world because of you?
Think ye to make of love a pestilence,
And ban for heresy the mother's kiss?
Shall man his noblest faculties forego,
High-hearted hope, imagination fair,

And all that's genial, all that's glad and sweet,
Trampling the pearls of heaven with swinish feet?

Go to! Your force is naught, your victories vain!
Slaves of illusion, ye for shadows war;

Not yours to alter or obliterate

The glowing thoughts of the Immortal Mind;
On transitory things ye work your will;
The quickening spirit of God abideth still.

KNOLL PAPERS

BY LYMAN ABBOTT

TEXTS AND THEMES FOR THE TIMES

FRIEND called my attention the other day to an advertisement announcing that the minister in a prominent church in his neighborhood would preach the following Sunday on "How to Choose a Husband. "This might have been a good theme for a humorous essay by Dr. Crothers or for one of E. S. Martin's inimitable editorials in "Life." But it hardly seems worthy of a successor of Isaiah and Paul, of Savonarola and Massillon, of John Wesley and Phillips Brooks. And it set me wondering whether there were many preachers in America as hard pressed for a theme; and, then, what are the themes which should inspire the sermons of the preachers of to-day? This paper is the result of some reflections upon this subject.

A tisement announcing that the minister in a prominent

I an

am very doubtful about the wisdom of advertising sermon

topics. Such advertising tends to make both preacher and people think of the sermon as a lecture and of the service as mere preliminary exercises." It tends to make the preacher select topics which he thinks will draw rather than topics which he thinks will minister to life. It tends to make the people look at the Sunday morning newspaper for a preacher who announces a title which arouses their curiosity, and choose their church accordingly. And it tends to make them think that if the advertising minister makes no announcement of his topic he has nothing of importance to say on that Sunday. When I first went to Plymouth Church, a reporter of the New York "World" called my house up by the telephone every Sunday morning to ask if I had preached on "anything in particular" that morning; and my children, one of whom generally went to the

[graphic]
[ocr errors]

SAVING FRENCH CHILDREN-THE BENEFICENT WORK OF THE AMERICAN RED CROSS AND THE ROCKEFELLER COMMISSION The mother of the little boy, Henri, has tuberculosis; but an American doctor and a French nurse are determined that he shall escape the scourge and grow up to be a useful and happy citizen of France. The picture was taken in one of the dispensaries in which the American Red Cross and the Rockefeller Commission for the Provention of Tuberculosis in Franco are fighting the disease in a factory quarter of Paris

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors]
« PredošláPokračovať »